WOODVILLE-West Torrens coach Narelle Smith does not want her unbeaten side to just be a strong home and away team and “fall into finals”, but instead be a “powerful, dominant team” that achieves success. The Eagles have taken the SANFL Women’s by storm in 2025, with eight wins on the trot leading into a top of the table clash with other in-form side and reigning premiers, South Adelaide.

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Now into her fourth season in the head coach role, Smith is just two wins away from eclipsing her total wins from the first three. Each year it was evident the Eagles have improved, but 2025 is the season everything has clicked. Smith said there was nothing drastic that changed within the playing group personnel wise, but more building the belief that the Eagles could win close games.

“We seriously haven’t changed too much to be honest,” she said. “It’s been a real drive to have consistency and continuity and we’ve achieved that within the playing group. “For example, our Round 1 team only had two new players so there was 19 players that have been in the program and this is their fourth preseason together so that’s been really consistent.”

The Eagles mentor introduced Under 16s All-Australian captain Maia Freemantle and athletic bottom-ager Ruby Lynch into the team, but she noted the improvement of younger players into their second and third senior seasons such as Imogen Trengove and Lucy Moore had made all the difference.

While Woodville-West Torrens has had some massive wins this season – including wins of 41, 55 and 50 in the past three weeks – and is averaging 10 goals per game, it was the Eagles’ hard-fought Round 2 win over Glenelg that most impressed the fourth year coach.

“I really enjoyed Round 2 v Glenelg where they challenged us and they got even with us in the last quarter and then we were able to kick two more to win the game,” Smith said. “I think last year Round 1 v Sturt we were in that similar position and we lost that game by seven points and this year it happened to us again in Round 2 (this year) and the playing group were able to stand up and execute the way we wanted to and we ended up winning by 12 points.

“It was at that moment you go ‘yeah we’re learning how to win’ and the playing group understood that really deeply, that that’s what you need to do when clubs come at you.”

Like every club, the goal heading into the season is finals, and now with eight wins in the bank – no club has missed finals with eight wins – the focus turns to securing a double chance with a top two spot. That goal will be severely helped by defeating the Eagles’ nearest rival South Adelaide this weekend.

“We’re averaging 60 points a game and really playing football the way that we wanted to, which is with a lot of offensive flair, with really good defensive principles standing up behind that,” Smith said. “So now you automatically move to the next stage which is we’re very, very keen to lock away a top two position and give ourselves a double chance.”

The feature of the Eagles’ dominance on the scoreboard is the three-prong tall forward attack of Klaudia O’Neill, Rosette Zerella and McKenzie Dowrick who have kicked 30 goals from 19 matches between them, while talented top-ager Trengove has also slotted 10 goals in her eight games.

“It’s a really difficult forwardline to match up on isn’t it?” Smith said of the three talls. “We often will sit back and when we’re doing a bit of oppo analysis and go ‘well we’re not sure who’s going to be able to find that height and the strength’, and they’re very, very different players all three of them, but if you let one loose, the other one will get up and we’re just really fortunate.

“Then you add the leg speed. We purposely put leg speed around those three and even when the talls aren’t having a day then the smalls tend to bob up and that’s really evident with Imogen Trengove and even Ashley Baker and Liv Evans, really play a great role for us in locking that ball in our front half which obviously all teams want to do.”

It all starts in the middle however, and Christina Leuzzi is in career-best form there, among the leading contenders for the league best and fairest. The former defender is averaging 23.5 disposals, 2.5 marks, 6.9 clearances, 7.5 tackles and 4.5 inside 50s from her eight games, having also represented her state and won the MVP for her performance against the VFLW.

While the hard-running onballer is known for her fierce attack of the contest and repeat work around the ground, Smith remembers the first preseason Leuzzi attended.

“When Leuzzi walked into our program and she won’t mind me saying this because it’s something that we often have a bit of a giggle about, she really struggled to even run a lap,” Smith said. “So high performance was where we needed to get her to, and to her credit she’s worked superbly hard for the last three preseasons.

“I thought she was outstanding last season and really unlucky not to get a few more accolades playing on the half-back as a small defender. We weren’t sure whether we’d put her straight in (to the midfield), and then it was pretty evident that during preseason that we wanted to play as her pure mid, one for her development but also that the cog that we’ve got running through the middle they’re also hard to match up on which is exactly what we want it to look like.”

Her role on-field became all the more important in the absence of Poppy Waterford who suffered a dreaded anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury against North Adelaide in Round 6. Smith said the playing group and coach staff had “heavy hearts” for Poppy, and that it was one of those “unfortunate stories” however she was in good spirits and the Eagles’ “hype girl”.

“She’s been there when we’ve been struggling and now she’ll probably miss out when hopefully all things going well we get to play finals,” Smith said. “But she’s an incredible human and able to put the team before self which is a lot of an ethos that we try and run internally, so we’ll be around her and she’ll be around us which will be great.`

Looking to the weekend against the second placed Panthers, Smith anticipated that South Adelaide would go back to what it does best and try and shut down any offensive flow from the Eagles.

“South are just so consistent with how they play and I’m expecting them to probably play a little bit differently against us than they have against some other teams,” she said. “I imagine they’re going to try and lock us down a little bit more. They’re the same, they’ve got guns on every line and their forwardline in particular is really potent.

“They’ve just got a real nice balance across the whole field and they’re not unlike us that if one doesn’t have a day out, then someone else will pop up. We’re really mindful that we don’t want to focus too much on them and just continue to play how we want to play.”

While percentage wise the Eagles are far and away the best side that even a loss on the weekend will not shift the needle in terms of ladder positions, Smith said it was only going to get harder from here with teh challenges of both teams heavily analysing their performances and then the unproven finals record.

“I think now that we’re in really good form, everyone is forgetting that we’ve never played a finals game,” Smith said. “We just go back to the start of the preseason about what we want to achieve and that finals goal.

“We don’t to just fall into the finals, we want to be a really powerful, dominant type team and we feel like we’ve got that mix going really well at the moment so it’s just all about bottling what that feels like and continue to strive to have the same outcome every week and just be really consistent.”